Comment by ben_w

I think it was Men In Black, possibly the cartoon, which parodied racism by having an alien say "All you bipeds look the same to me". And when Stargate SG-1 came out, some of the journalism about it described the character Teal'c as "African-American" just because the actor Christopher Judge, playing Teal'c, was.

So my guess as to why, is that all this is being done from the perspective of central California, with the politics and ethical views of that place at this time. If the valley in "Silicon valley" had been the Rhine rather than Santa Clara, then the different perspective would simply have meant different, rather than no, issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a#Ap...